‘End of Jewish Existence’ or ‘Social Identity in Conflict’? Two Forms of Assimilation in Early Social Sciences

Abstract

In this article I seek to demonstrate two separate but interconnected arguments pertaining to the meeting of social science history and 20th century Jewish history. My first argument is that it is possible to abstract two competing conceptions of Jewish assimilation from German and American social scientific discourses of the first half of the 20th century. The first conceives of assimilation as the gradual disappearance of the Jews as a particular group and the second as a social form of alienated individual identity. My second argument is that these contrary understandings of Jewish assimilation are embedded in and closely intertwined with specific anthropological or sociological epistemological considerations. Through this line of argument, I attempt to call attention to the importance of social science history for 20th century Jewish history. In other words, to point to the fact that different understandings of Jewish assimilation are closely tied to conceptual developments in specific fields of knowledge.